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I want to clean-up, despeckle & then input tif, jpg, jfx(tif), pdf into a multi-page tif. I want to move/delete pages, rotate pages, and also export pages into a new multipage tif.
I want to annotate this multi-page tif document with TRANSPARENT background images and text, programatically placing them at a mouse-click. I want to flatten the resulting document so that no one can later extract separate images (the transparent background signature image, which was combined with the tiff, primarily).
I want to output the resulting annotated document as a pdf.
I have decided to abandon interactive annotation of pdf's, as the outcomes (especially on various recipient machines) is unreliable. I want to create the output, and only THEN export the "flattened" image as a pdf, one image per page, not the multiple objects characteristic of a pdf file.
I want to do this in VB.net.
Can this be done with your tools? If so, which tools. If not, what cannot be done with your tools?
I have been a user of pdf-xchange for some time, and recognize the quality of your products. :?

however - you need to prepare your images first in an imaging program and only when satisfied with the result - convert your image to PDF, the majority of your requirements as outlined are imaging related tasks and not the domain of a PDF Tool.

We do offer an Imaging SDK (with specail options to interact with our other PDF SDK's to stream data etc) which could be used for this task from VB.NET called Image-XChange, but you would also need to use PDF-Tools (either the SDK or the end user version depending on whether you also want to programmatically control the process to PDF as well).

You can download a fully capable evaluation of Image-XChange SDK from the links below and more info - as to whether this is justfied for your task if just for you, is another question - all our SDK's are targetted for professional development and subsequent Royalty Free distribution - and I am not sure if you intend your final application for re-distribution and sale or not.

John:
Thanks for your speedy (as always <g>) reply.
I have figured out what I need to do with my PDF problems, but I still need the components to do conversions from PDF to tiff and from tiff to PDF.
What I plan to do is convert any PDF's that give me an error when I try to open them to tiffs, then convert to PDF (the storage format of choice because of the PDF compression, and because I can annotate them as I wish). Then, I will do as I now do in annotating the PDF (which works OK, as long as I control the starting doc, which I WILL with the prior convert to tiff of any problem PDF's before I convert it back to PDF before starting my editing) ... this wrings out the problems with the plethora of applications that make (each slightly different) pdfs (plus the problems cause by senders "locking" the docs), plus also my concerns about the problem of sending out a PDF with a signature image imbedded in it. My "fix" for this is to convert the PDF to a tiff one more time before converting it back to a PDF for sending and continued storage. Then this PDF will not be a group of objects, but rather a single indivisible image. This means that what was sent out cannot be easily modified (a good thing<g>). Also, sending a PDF consisting of a single image per page will be no more of a problem for the security of the signature embedded withn the text than a photocopy of the document would be. Otherwise, a typical PDF that contains a separate signature image which could be extracted is an identity theft hazard. And, there should be no problem with any tool opening a PDF which is just a "wrapper" around a tiff image, either.
So, the question is simpler. It looks like I need a PDF-Tiff and Tiff-PDF converter that may be available (and programable, so that all the above takes place in the background). Does this make sense to you, or am I hopelessly confused about how to handle my concerns about the end-to-end process? I am looking towards distribution at some point, too.

we offer TIFF-XChange - this will do the PDF to TIFF conversion for you - either as an end user tool (no programmable access) or as an SDK which would allow you to do all in the back ground and distribute Royalty Free etc - and there is a simple example for VB showing the conversion process using Acrobat Reader to output to TIFF using TIFF-XChange as the conversion tool.